by Rick Jervis and Doyle Rice , USA TODAY

by Rick Jervis and Doyle Rice , USA TODAY

GRANBURY, Texas - As the roar of the storm grew and the walls began to shudder, Carlton and Christy Russell crammed themselves and their 11-year-old twin daughters into their hall closet and sang church songs.

Outside, the muscular tornado that ripped through this city, 35 miles southwest of Fort Worth on Wednesday evening was bouncing from house to house, shredding roofs, splintering homes and tossing cars and people blocks away. Inside, the Russells prayed for a miss.

"You can feel the walls breathing and the roof going up and down," Christy Russell, 37, said Thursday at a Red Cross shelter set up at a local church. "We were singing and praying. And screaming a little bit."

The Russells walked away from the ordeal but Hood County, Texas, officials say at least six residents died in one of the worst tornado outbursts the city has ever seen. Late Thursday, rescue workers were searching for seven missing residents. The storm displaced more than 250 others.

Hood County officials on Thursday said two women and four men were killed in the tornado. Officials will next begin the long, meticulous task of cleaning up debris and rebuilding. Nearly 100 homes were destroyed in the storm, some ripped clean to their foundations.

After surveying the destroyed neighborhoods Thursday morning, Hood County Sheriff Roger Deeds said he was surprised there weren't more deaths. The Rancho Brazos subdivision - the hardest-hit area of the city - was a barren landscape of splintered homes, flattened cars and piles of jumbled debris sitting atop of concrete foundations where homes once stood.

"I was expecting more loss of life," he said. "It was one of the worst things we've ever seen in Hood County."

Ismael Martinez, 57, was driving home from work at the Pecan Plantation with his son when baseball-size hail began pelting their car. They pulled over and parked under a tree, hoping for a break in the weather. Slowly, the hail shrunk from baseball-size to golf ball-size to nothing.

"We thought we were going to be stoned to death," Martinez said. "I've never seen anything like this in my life."

The Granbury tornado was one of 12 twisters that touched down in North Texas at around 8 p.m. Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service in Fort Worth.

The weather service damage survey team in Granbury found EF-4 damage on the Fujita Scale of Tornado Intensity, with wind speeds of 166 mph to 200 mph. EF-4 is the second-highest level on the scale.

Deeds said 37 people were treated at hospitals. The injuries ranged from lost limbs to minor bumps and bruises, he said. The victims were found in or near their homes, mostly in the Rancho Brazos subdivision. Earlier Thursday, about 20,000 homes and businesses in the region were without power. By the evening, it had dropped to 3,500.

As the storm approached Wednesday evening, Deeds drove through town and huddled over a handheld radio with the National Weather Service and local "storm spotters," he said. As they noticed the dark, twisting clouds dipping toward the ground, Deeds triggered the city's "Code Red" emergency phone service that dialed 18,000 homes and alerted them of the impending twister - a move that may have saved dozens of lives.

One call recipient was Christy Russell, who immediately hustled her family into the hall closet.

After more than an hour, with sirens still blaring across town, Russell said she ventured outside and saw destruction and debris - uprooted trees, flattened cars and demolished homes - where her neighborhood once was.

"Each time the sky lit up with lightning, you would just see - nothing," Russell said. "Everything was gone."